


Untangling the Mess

by rhodrymavelyne



Series: A Hopeless Situation [15]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:00:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26862517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodrymavelyne/pseuds/rhodrymavelyne
Summary: Xander takes a walk at night after the Buffy/Cordelia show and gets a lot more than he bargained for...
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers, Angel/Darla (BtVS), Angel/Xander Harris, Jenny Calendar/Rupert Giles, Xander Harris/Buffy Summers, Xander Harris/Cordelia Chase
Series: A Hopeless Situation [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/377794
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	Untangling the Mess

**Author's Note:**

> This is Part 15 of my ongoing story; It's a Hopeless Situation. It takes place after Schiapperella Sappho Strikes! I don't own Buffy, I'm just borrowing the characters and their world for a flight of fanciful fandom.

How did everything become such a tangled mess? A tangled, horny mess. Such messes could be fun, but Xander Harris preferred for them to be private. This was turning out to be a spectacle.

Not that the spectacle hadn’t been impressive. Everyone was talking about Buffy and Cordelia. Shock, some disgust, but mostly awe had everyone gog-eyed. They way those two girls looked, strolling down the school hall arm in arm wasn’t something anyone was about to forget. Xander Harris had it on perpetual replay in his head. Here he’d thought his thing was sweat, boobs, and chicks kicking ass. It was so much better than linoleum. Linoleum, now there was a word drenched in Cordy memories. 

That moment in the hall had been all about Cordelia, Cordelia in her fashionable element, luring Buffy in as well. This wasn’t an element Xander knew the slightest thing about. How could he be so close to both Buffy and Cordy, yet so distant? How had he expected to feel, seeing Buffy and Cordy together? Cordelia had been his girlfriend. Buffy, why, he’d been crushing on Buffy ever since he’d first crashed his skateboard at the sight of her. He’d become one of her closest friends, yet now, somehow he was on the outs. 

Xander found his feet tracing a familar path, one he’d discovered following Buffy. This path guaranteed a low-grade boner. It was the way Buffy walked with secretive slowness. That’s what he always told himself. Only Buffy hadn’t been going to her house. Neither had Xander. 

“It’s because of Buffy,” he said to the empty night. “It has absolutely nothing to do with him, no matter how buff he might be. It’s all about her. It always has been.”

Speak of the buff, there was Dead Boy, standing under a lamp post. Talking to someone who was invisible.

Angsty thoughts of guilty boners departed from Xander after the recent meeting in the library. Angel was talking to someone was invisible. This was not a good sign.

****

Angel sensed something was amiss. He smelled it in the air, smelled it on the guilt and fear of the mortals around him. Something was stirring them up.

“It’s not just mortals, boy.” A familar Irish brogue froze the vampire who’d once been a boy named Liam in place. “It’s anyone who’s got something to be ashamed and that’s you.”

His father stood before him, dressed in the same vest, tunic, and breeches he’d died in. Blood dripped from a wound in his neck. 

“Still the same disappointment, aren’t you? You get your soul back and just what do you choose to do with it?” 

“You can’t be real.” Angel closed his eyes. “Father, you’ve been dead for centuries. Why are choosing to haunt me now?” 

“Maybe because you’ve never been a bigger disappointment than you are now.” His father strode towards him, seeming to loom over him. Any sense of him being tiny was gone. “You come back to this Hellmouth and cling to your Slayer’s skirts. You tempt her with your body, allow her to tempt you with hers, risking becoming a demon once more. Is this what you chose to do with your second chance, boy?”

“Shut up,” Angel snarled. “You have no right to criticize my life…unlife!” He moved closer to the man who could still get to him, even though he couldn’t be real. “If I’m worthless, if I am a disappointment, maybe it’s because you’ve never believed me to be any better than that!”

“You tell him, Dead Boy.” 

Angel whirled to see Xander Harris standing behind him. Smiling that odd little smile of his, which suggested a hidden strength he was still in the process of discovering. 

“Dead people have been showing up all over the place, whispering about all the things the living are ashamed of.” Xander stepped forward between Angel and his father, of all the brave stupid things. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe his father couldn’t hurt anyone, only haunt them. “Guessing from the way Angel's repeating parts of my family soundtrack, I’ve got an idea of whom you’re pretending to be.”

“Pretending to be,” Angel echoed but he wasn’t surprised. Perhaps a tiny bit disappointed. He’d hated his father, he’d hated him so much, but if there was a chance he could see him, speak to him, have some closure with him…Darla’s words came back to mock him. He’d killed him, but he’d never won his approval. He never would. 

Pain knotted in his stomach but it would pass. He was a vampire. Such human sensations never did last. Having a soul, however, sometimes made them linger. 

“Yeah, this guy is a big Pretender,” Xander got up really close to Angel’s father, gazed at him as if he could see him. “All he’s got is words. He can’t hurt you.”

“Can’t I?” Liam’s father grinned an ugly grin and vanished. 

Angel flinched to see himself standing very close, a suggestive smile on his face. “After all, I’m already in your head. I possess your body. You hunger for what I was.” 

***

Xander gulped at the sight of the two Angels. One of them wore a slight smile promising creative pain. He knew that smile. It had haunted his dreams after a moment in the hospital, one he’d never been able to talk about with anyone. 

“You always wanted to bite him,” the smiling Angelus whispered to Angel. He circled him, moving closer to Xander. He inspected the mortal boy as if he were a roast, piping hot from the oven and smelling ever so tempting. “And you, you always wanted me to bite you. That’s the real reason you followed Buffy every night. You wanted to know where I lived. And you found me. And you watched me.” 

Angelus moved very close to Xander, inspecting his neck. “And I knew you were watching me. It made me hungry.”

“Leave him alone.” Angel gazed at his doppelganger with utter coldness. 

“Oh, but he doesn’t want me to, Angel!” Angelus chortled as if the whole thing were a fine joke. “And you don’t want to leave him alone.”

“You were right,” Angelus whispered right behind Xander, into his ear. “I was checking out your neck. How could I not? You’re so moist and delicious.”

“Bet you say that to all the humans.” Xander felt his heart beating very fast, yet his skin didn’t tingle with the proximity of this Angelus the way it had at the hospital. “We’re all moist and delicious to vampires.”

“Actually, no.” Angelus backed away with a broad smile before transforming into Jenny Calendar. 

Xander almost let out a yelp at the sight of pretty, petite brunette teacher, the one who’d found Giles in all his pedantic charm so charming. 

“Angel doesn’t bite everyone.” Jenny gave Xander a sweet, sad smile before turning her attention to Angel. “He didn’t bite me. He just snapped my neck.” 

Angel closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.

“Somehow that was crueler than draining me. You showed me such disregard.” Jenny shook her head, as if unable to believe the bad manners of her killer. “I was, after all, a human being pumping full of blood, yet you wouldn’t even take a taste.” She stalked away from Xander toward Angel, making a circle around him.  


The dark-haired woman became a petite, blonde beauty dressed in a high school uniform, one Xander hadn’t seen since she’d gone poof in a pile of dust on the floor of the Bronze. “Guess you’ve always had questionable taste.”

“Darla,” Angel murmured, opening his eyes. The pain, the sorrow swimming in them silenced Xander, killed anything he might say. “You were trying to kill Buffy. You gave me no choice but to kill you.”  


“Little Xander is right. I’m not Darla any more than I’m your father. Or you.” Darla morphed into a man dressed in old-fashioned clothes before shifting back into Angel, wearing equally old-fashioned clothes, shirt half open, revealing the impressive planes of his chest. He shrank down into a small blonde woman again, only her blonde hair was arranged in a impressive pile of ringlets on top of her head, wearing a gown very like the one Buffy had gotten into trouble in one Halloween, exposing an impressive cleavage. There was nothing submissive or shrinking about Darla in her eighteenth century dress. “You staked Darla and sent her to Hell.” 

“He couldn’t have.” Xander found his voice at last, gazing at the deadly female confection of times past. “He said it himself. When you become a vampire, your soul is gone.”

“The vampire can’t get your soul, is that right, buddy?” Darla lengthened and sprouted up into Jesse, wearing the same shirt he’d worn at the Bronze, the night Xander dusted him. “Maybe it can’t. Maybe your Watcher was right. I wasn’t your friend. I was the thing that killed him, just as you were the thing that killed me.”

Jesse disappeared only to reappear very close to Xander, face distorted and demonic, baring fangs. “You never gave me a chance to prove otherwise, did you? You didn’t get to know me as a demon. You didn’t even try.”

“No,” Xander whispered. “You didn’t give me a chance. You tried to kill me.”

“Wrong. I was trying to kill Cordelia. I might have been nicer to you.” Jesse shrugged, gazing at Xander in disapproval. “I could have made you strong. I could have made you immortal. I could have made you more than just a nobody.” 

Jesse shook his head, making a tsking sound before shrinking into Darla, who was more wore the Catholic school girl uniform she’d died in. “Boys like you never appreciate my gifts.” Her outfit slimmed into a silky Eastern gown with a high collar, hair piled once more upon her head. “For centuries, we roamed the earth, bringing the most merciless hunters to their knees. We were most than lovers, we were paragons of the night.”

The dead vampire moved in Angel’s direction in a slow, slinky stalk. “You dusted all of that without a second thought. You never knew the pathetic girl I was as a mortal, but you loved the demon. And the demon loved you. Everything we were together you dusted.”  


“That’s right.” 

Angel lifted his head, stared right at Darla. “Only you’re wrong about one thing. I never loved you. Not like I love Buffy.”

Angel struck with sudden viciousness at the apparition of her former sire. She evaporated into nothing. 

“Guess you never loved me either,” Jesse murmured into Xander’s ear. “Not as much as you love Buffy. Only it wasn’t Buffy you were looking for in the middle of the night.”

“Maybe it wasn’t.” Xander turned slowly in the direction of Jesse. “All right. I admit it. I think Angel is hot. How could anyone Buffy loves be anything other than hot? And yes, it’s not just about her. I’m not sure what it’s about, but you know what?” 

He moved closer to his former friend, stared at the evil mockery of his face. “If I hadn’t followed Buffy, if I hadn’t learned where Angel lived, I wouldn’t have been able to go to him that night when Buffy needed us, when Buffy needed me. I couldn’t have saved her. And nothing you say to me will make me ashamed of that!” 

Jesse glowered at him before disappearing into a giant mouth with teeth, bared at Xander. The mouth disappeared a moment later.

“What was that?” Xander gasped, staring at the empty space where it had been. 

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t like anything I’ve ever encountered.” Angel shook his head, gazed at the mortal boy for a long moment. “How long has this been happening? When did this begin?” 

“It began with a rumour, no.” Xander frowned. “It began with someone starting a rumour at school. Want to bet that someone got more than they bargained for?”

Angel didn’t take his eyes off Xander. “You should find that someone.”

“Yeah.” Xander felt his cheeks flame, remembering everything the demon had said. 

“You were right.” Angel looked away at last. “If you hadn’t followed me, you wouldn’t have been able to save Buffy that night. And it was you who saved her.”

“Besides it’s not like you still live in that apartment I went to.” Xander summoned a cheeky grin with some difficulty. “You’ve moved.”

“And you know exactly where.” Angel stared at him with a little smile which could mean he meant to hit him, bite him, or was simply amused by him. 

“Yes, I do.” Xander nodded and backed away a few steps. “I’m going to go away now. Got things to do, people to find.”

“It’s the middle of the night.” Angel stood very still, not moving, the tiny smile still on his lips. 

“Even so…bye!” Xander scampered away as fast as he could run. 

Angel watched him flee, the smile growing just a little.

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of references to Angel via the flashbacks and the costumes, plus the appearance of Liam's father, Liam being who Angel was when he was mortal.
> 
> The reference to linoleum refers to a moment where Xander admitted to Cordelia that looking at linoleum made him want to have sex in Innocence.


End file.
